


Ba mhaith liom mo Mhamaí

by HartwinMakethMan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bilingual Steve, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, and who do you want most when everything’s fallen apart?, but more than that, he misses everything, of course he misses Bucky, sad Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 19:01:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18267464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HartwinMakethMan/pseuds/HartwinMakethMan
Summary: There are certain days of the year that Steve can’t be seen on the communal floor of the Tower, or even in the gym. Those are the days that Steve needs his privacy.





	Ba mhaith liom mo Mhamaí

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little ditty, getting me back into writing. With Endgame coming out, i just wanted to bring it back for a moment to the simpler times just after the Battle of New York. In my mind, they’re all living happily ever after in Stark Tower, bickering harmlessly. 
> 
> Ah, simpler times. 
> 
> I know this is short, but if you enjoyed it please drop me a comment. I really appreciate it. Thank you ❤️

On certain days of the year— St. Patrick’s Day, Mother’s Day, some days when he’s just nostalgic enough, just lonely enough— Steve will change JARVIS’s settings for his floor of the Tower.

Well, he doesn’t change the AI’s settings as much as he makes a shy request. While Steve may be better with modern technology than anyone would expect, he definitely wasn’t good enough to change _anything_ about any of Tony’s inventions.

Besides, he would never want anybody— Tony Stark especially— to find out about this.

Those types of days are the days that the rest of the Avengers won’t see the Captain in the gym or on the communal floor. He’ll just disappear.

And for the longest while, they don’t think twice about it— it’s pretty normal for Steve to be distant. Tony makes some off hand joke about Cap being “too old to keep up with the kids”, and Natasha jabs back about Steve being “the kid” compared to Tony. Clint would snort a laugh, Bruce would shake his head and grin.

Every time it happens, they all go about their coffee and their bickering like usual.

It’s a bright day in mid April when Tony randomly decides that he’s had enough.

“Cap needs to be a team player— we’ll pretend it’s a holiday or something…” he grouses, coming off a binge of inventing in the lab and certainly not thinking straight. He drags the lot of them down to Steve’s floor.

Whatever they could have predicted that they would find, they stopped short when they saw the scene before them.

Well, they stopped short when they _heard_ the scene— the moment they stepped off the elevator, something was different.

There was a new voice reverberating from the kitchen to their ears. It was soft, definitely female, musical and delicate.

Tony grinned like a maniac, about to burst into the apartment and demand they be introduced to Cap’s mysterious lady friend—

But it wasn’t like that, and he was smart enough to realize it as he turned the corner and saw the blond soldier.

He was hunched over at his kitchen counter, coffee in hand. Still in his sweats and a tank top, hair messy from his pillow, Steve looked so much younger than they’d ever thought he could be— so _human_.

They were lost for words, all of them. Every second since Cap had come out of the ice, since the Battle of New York all those months ago, there had never been a single crack in the stoic professionalism of _Captain_ _America_.

His blue eyes were closed like he was savoring a taste, or a particularly nice thought. He would have heard them crashing around if he wasn’t so enraptured by the disembodied voice.

It was echoing in the huge, empty apartment— a soft female voice from JARVIS’s system, speaking a foreign language that few of the Avengers had ever heard before. It was lush and wild, and too fast to parse out words from the warbling tones, but Steve seemed to know it well, talking along under his breath in a few places.

Natasha was the first to act, to shake herself out of her shock and understand that they were _not_ supposed to be seeing this. As silently as she could, she started tugging her friends back toward the elevator, back away from this breach of their leader’s privacy.

It wasn’t until the doors slid shut and the voice was gone that the team began to absorb what they’d seen.

“What the _Hell_ was _that_?” Tony was first to say, breaking the tense quiet.

“It’s Gaelic. Irish Gaelic.” Natasha murmured, just loud enough to be heard. It didn’t feel right to broadcast it.

There are certain days of the year that Steve would stay in, coffee in hand, and make a shy request of the AI in his ceiling. It was typically the only time he would speak on days like these. The days when he felt the loneliest.

The team wouldn’t bother him again.

Steve needs his privacy on days like these. Days like Sarah Rogers’s birthday.

 


End file.
